How much longer until there's just one publisher?

http://www.destructoid.com/hold-onto-your-hats-vivendi-acquiring-activision-to-create-activision-blizzard-57124.phtml
http://www.gamespot.com/news/6183557.html?action=convert&om_clk=latestnews&tag=latestnews;title;0

Two sources, sums up the same news bit, albeit the upper link having a humourous stab at GameSpot's recent editor firing, but that's another story...

Anyways, cliff notes, Vivendi now owns Activision (from what I can understand), and for some reason is renaming the dev/producer studio into Activision Blizzard, for name-association's sake I assume with Blizzard, as to which Vivendi publishers WoW for.

So what are your thoughts on this? It looks to me that Vivendi will become the new EA eventually.....you know, too big for its own good; hungry for money, that sort of thing?


Sure a fair amount of buyouts this year....especially with regards to EA earlier on in 2007.

Erm i thought that Vivendi got bought out (and blizz came along with that)

..not good for indies anyway..

Why should this be bad for indies? I would say it doesn't matter for indies as they are in a totally different markt segment. Now that Activision-Blizzard is bigger than EA, maybe EA will try to be more innovative again? We'll see...

...everything whats going to be monopole cant be good...soon or later their hunger will drop on to indies...

This is just something that potentially was needed to break the monopole.

EA nearly crushed Ubisoft, Activision and Vivendi were having a hard life as well.

With this counter pole to EA, there is now at least a chance that there is something good happening.
that together with the new labeling publishing that EA does might in the end work out very good for indie developers.

More possibilities is always better.

wont be long before vivendi goes the same way they did when they were vivendi-universal

I don't know i'm somehow not afraid of this in the game market because this business is based on a repetitive cycle. There always will be smaller developers or developers who break out of this like Flagship for instance and then do their own thing. Then after some time they might be eaten and others might split again and so on.

And the more games from a big publisher suck this gives more chances for the small developers.

I'm more afraid of something like the CPU situation were Intel has more or less a monopole and they just let AMD survive a bit to say: Look we don't have a monopole there still is AMD but in practice they are the monopolist. If they would like to they could easily wipe out AMD.

not just AMD..you have one Fujitsu and Motorola..

In a lot of CPU fields Intel is the clear leader. ARM is strong here, IBM(PPC,Cell) is doing fine there but in a whole Intel is ahead. With the beginning of next year we'll see the Penryn. Can you tell me another company which is so far that they could come up with a 45nm production or have the money for enabling such a process easily?

Its not, in a competition way as nothings really changed as its a fairly different market anyway.
The only thing indies have got to fear is if MS and only the biggest games/software/hardware companies go to bed, the babies that result could be in the form of "private-club" controls to stop indies (or anyone) coding themselves. Which could already be starting to happen.

Hi D4NM4N,


There are still many publishers for indie to publish games on internet. Also there are still many game tools or open-source engines around to make games.
How do you come to this conclusion? Any evidence? I don't understand.

..someone whos controlling your OS can do pretty much anything, if really want..

EA is still bigger...


http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=16458

I know that, but take for example if MS etc suddenly decided that only programs written by "authorised" developers can run? That would take all the indi-engines you like out of scope for a start.

Evidence no, but scary reading yes:

There is nothing to stop them making defender non-optional in the name of "security"

Here is the full article on it : http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6319845.stm

Probably not happen but its harder to say they are holding a monopoly when there is many powerful corps involved and its in all of their interests. No powerful entities need to take them to court and noone else can afford to. Its just a little worrying that this has appeared, basically giving them full permission to decide whats best for you and *their* OS.

I reckon my eyez got brainz with stalks.. talk about! I mean where for we been atcha for so long. Brainz they don even talk no more, they juz sign and wave. My wall is callin'. Tomorrow happy. Hope I been helpful. I lie down now. Bye.

D4NM4N: Microsoft actually went actively in the opposite direction as XNA clearly shows and the recent deal of MS with TGC to include GDK with VC++ 2008 Express surely shows even better.

Basically all that "fear" is pure no knowledge and bs spreading of anti MS groups.
Sure, they tried to get more control. But if you look at the rate at which MS stuff is attacked you start to understand why they wanted a more restrictive security system.

and after all: So far apple did not get that much of kiddie rants because they actually hardware lock their systems with DRM technology, that MS originally intend to use and for which people raised idiotic large flame campaigns ...

so this is purely ANTI MS propaganda, not anything that I would consider the least bit objective.
At least not until I see a far harder attack against Apple when it comes to enforced behaviors and active lockouts of different things.

Except they've already used Defender to uninstall competitors software as "dangerous".

If someone questions a very worrying clause in a licence ageement that fundamentally effects 80-90% of the worlds computers & market, thats not propaganda, thats raising a valid and worrying question. They probably wouldnt get away with it anyway, but it does make you wonder why, thats all. I know apple are as bad and would probably be worse than MS given the chance.

This is the age of the Internet. I don't think that the old monopolized distribution channels can harm indie developers anymore.

The only things that can harm you as an indie are a lack of marketing budget, Google not finding your website or having created a suicidal product like a word processor for Microsoft Windows that tries to compete with Microsoft Word... Other than that, you can do just fine, despite the big boys. ;-)

It will if it ever gets to the stage where you cant run what you download unless its a known publisher.
You never know they may make a new kind of public safe executable a ".SEXE" :) or something that runs in a limited safe execution 'bubble', but needs expensive Visual Studio and authorised SDKs to build one.

Now THAT is propaganda and raw speculation, but can you see now what im trying to say, where it *could* lead and why this is cause for concern?